UC-NRLF 


YC   16240 


GIFT  OF 
Prof.    S.G.Morley 


^ 


THE  TRDE  STORY 


re's  Li  E. 


3    IPublislier, 


319   WASHINGTON   STKEET, 
BOSTON. 


PRICE,   10  CENTS. 


r  ' 


The  Trne  Story  of  Mrs.  Shatepeare's  Life. 


/THOUGH  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the 
improved  taste  and  higher  moral  sense  of 
the  more  educated  classes,  both  in  England 
and  America,  have  completely  driven  the  plays  of  William 
Shakespeare  from  the  stage,  yet  this  advance  is  unfortu- 
nately more  than  counterbalanced  by  the  enormous  in- 
crease of  cheap  editions  of  his  works,  daily  issuing  from  a 
corrupt  and  venal  press ;  thus  bringing  the  unreflecting 
populace  and  guileless  youth  of  both  countries  again  under 
the  power  of  that  brilliant  and  seductive  genius,  from 
which  it  was  hoped  they  had  escaped. 

In  order  still  further  to  ensnare  and  allure  the 
thoughtless,  these  cheap  editions  are  too  often  garnished 
with  biographical  notices  of  the  author's  life,  described 
in  garish  and  attractive  language;  and  the  editors  of 
these  dangerous  works,  not  content  with  exalting  to  the 
skies  a  genius  only  too  likely  to  enchant  and  enthral 
the  unwary,  endeavor  to  blind  the  judgment  of  the 


M532707 


unthinking  reader  by  unblushingly  repeating  as  truth 
the  fulsome  adulation  lavished  upon  Mr,  Shakespeare  by 
the  boon  companions  of  the  tavern  wherein  he  was 
accustomed  to  seek  oblivion  of  the  dark  thoughts  by 
which  his  soul  was  haunted,  in  the  wildest  excesses  of 
maddening  intoxication. 

Thus  it  is  upon  the  authority  of  his  fellow-rioters  that 
we  are  repeatedly  told  that  he  was  a 

"  Gentle  spirit,  from  whose  pen 
Large  streams  of  honey  and  sweet  nectar  flow." 

"  The  man  whom  Nature's  self  had  made 
To  mock  herself,  and  Truth  to  imitate 
With  kindly  counter,  under  mimic  shade ; 
Our  pleasant  Willy." 

9          Truth  to  imitate!  we  shall  presently  see  with  fell 
intent.     Again,  it  has  been  said :  — 

• 

"  A  gentler  shepherd  nowhere  may  be  found." 

Such  is  the  magic  of  genius,  even  when  the  life  of  its 
possessor  is  known  to  have  been  one  of  lewd  and 
unhallowed  riot,  that  it  is  a  fact  that  the  poet's  person- 
ality, fate,  and  happiness  have  had  an  interest  for  the 
whole  civilized  world,  which  we  will  venture  to  say  was 


unparalleled.  It  is  within  the  writer's  recollection 
how,  in  the  obscure  mountain  town  where  she  spent  her 
early  days,  the  life  of  William  Shakespeare  had 
penetrated,  and  the  belief  in  the  gentleness  of  "fancy's 
child"  was  universal. 

All  this  while  it  does  not  appear  to  occur  to  the 
thousands  of  unreflecting  readers  that  they  are  listening 
merely  to  the  story  of  his  fellow-mummers,  and  that  the 
one  witness  whose  evidence  would  be  beat  worth  having 
has  never  spoken  at  all.  Nay,  more,  this  witness,  this 
unhappy  but  devoted  wife,  who  was  a  being  possessed  of 
an  almost  supernatural  power  of  moral  divination,  and  a 
grasp  of  the  very  highest  and  most  comprehensive  things, 
that  made  her  lightest  opinions  singularly  impressive, 
has  been  assumed  to  have  been  unworthy  of  her  accom- 
plished husband ;  and  the  artless  Mr.  Moore,  in  his  life 
of  the  lately-unmasked  demon,  Lord  Byron,  thus  alludes 
to  this  angelic  woman :  * '  By  whatever  austerity  of 
temper  or  habits  the  poets  Dante  and  Milton  may  have 
drawn  upon  themselves  such  a  fate,  it  might  be  expected 
that  the  '  gentle  Shakespeare  '  would  have  stood  exempt 
from  the  common  calamity  of  his  brethren.  But 
amongst  the  very  few  facts  of  his  life  that  have  been 
transmitted  to  us  there  is  none  more  clearly  proved  than 
the  unhappiness  of  his  marriage." 


6 


It  was  of  this  one  witness,  whose  faithful  lips  were 
sealed  by  affection,  and  of  her  terrible  existence  while 
her  husband  was  rioting  in  London,  shut  up  in  the  lonely 
country  home  made  hideous  to  her  by  her  knowledge  of 
the  dark  and  guilty  secret  hidden  within  its  walls,  that 
the  poet  was  evidently  thinking  when  he  wrote  the  awful 
lines  :  — 

"  But  that  lam  forbid 
To  tell  the  secrets  of  my  prison  house, 
I  could  a  tale  unfold,  whose  lightest  word 
Would  harrow  up  thy  soul  :".... 

but  she  remained  silent,  even  to  her  own  parents,  whose 
feelings  she  magnanimously  spared. 

The  veil  which  has  hitherto  covered  this  dark  history 
may  now  be  withdrawn.  The  time  has  come  when  the 
truth  may  be  told.  All  the  actors  in  the  scene  have 
long  disappeared  from  the  stage  of  mortal  existence,  and 
passed,  let  us  have  faith  to  hope,  into  a  world  where 
they  would  desire  to  expiate  their  faults  by  instituting 
—  did  not  the  lapse  of  time  unfortunately  render  all 
scientific  investigation  useless  —  a  coroner's  inquest 
upon  the  remains  which,  several  centuries  earlier, 
would  have  been  found  beneath  a  certain  crab  and 
a  certain  mulberry  tree,  in  the  vicinity  of  Stratford- 
upon-Avon. 


From  the  height  at  which  he  might  have  been  happy 
as  a  most  successful  dramatist,  and  the  husband  of  an 
almost  divine  woman,  Mr.  Shakespeare  fell  into  the 
depths  of  secret  criminal  homicide,  assisted,  in  the  latter 
part  of  his  career,  by  a  blood  relation ;  — discovery 
must  have  been  utter  ruin  and  expulsion  from  civilized 
society. 

From  henceforth  this  damning,  guilty  secret  became 
the  ruling  force  in  his  life ;  holding  him  with  a  morbid 
fascination,  yet  filling  him  with  remorse  '  and  anguish 
and  insane  dread  of  detection.  His  various  friends, 
seeing  that  he  was  wretched,  pressed  marriage  upon 
him. 

In  an  hour  of  reckless  desperation  he  proposed  to  Anne 
Hathaway.  The  world  knows  well  that  Mr.  Shake- 
speare had  the  gift  of  expression,  and  will  not  be 
surprised  that  he  wrote  a  very  beautiful  letter.  It  ran 
thus : — 

"To  the  celestial,  my  soul's  idol,  the  most  beauti- 
fied Anne  Hathaway.  In  her  excellent  white  bosom, 
these  :  — 

"  Doubt  that  the  stars  are  fire, 

Doubt  that  the  sun  doth  move ; 
Doubt  truth  to  be  a  liar, 
But  never  doubt  I  love. 


8 


0  dear  Anne,  I  am  ill  at  these  numbers ;  I  have  not 
art  to  reckon  my  groans ;  but  that  I  love  thee  best,  0 
most  best,  believe  it.  Thine  ever,  most  dear  lady,  while 
this  machine  is  to  him. 

"  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE." 

The  woman  who  had  already  learned  to  love  him  fell 
at  once  into  the  snare.  Her  answer  was  a  frank, 
outspoken  avowal  of  her  love  for  him ;  giving  herself  to 
him  heart  and  hand.  The  treasure  of  affection  he  had 
secured  was  like  a  vision  of  a  lost  heaven  to  a  soul  in 
hell.  But  he  could  follow  his  own  maxim,  he  could 

"  Look  like  the  innocent  flower, 
But  be  the  serpent  under  it." 

Before  the  world,  therefore,  and  to  his  intimates,  he 
was  the  successful  fiance,  conscious  all  the  while  of  the 
deadly  secret  that  lay  cold  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart. 

Not  all  at  once  did  the  full  knowledge  of  the  dreadful 
reality  into  which  she  had  entered  come  upon  the  young 
wife.  She  knew  vaguely,  from  the  wild  avowals  of  the 
first  hours  of  their  marriage,  that  there  was  a  dreadful 
secret  of  guilt;  that  Mr.  Shakespeare's  soul  was  torn 
with  agonies  of  remorse.  In  one  of  her  moonlight  walks 
near  the  crab-tree,  which,  from  Mr.  Shakespeare's  being 
so  frequently  seen  near  it,  tradition  —  though  unsus- 


picious  of  the  dreadful  truth  —  has  connected  with  his 
name,  there  came  an  hour  of  revelation, —  an  hour  when, 
in  a  manner  which  left  no  kind  of  room  for  doubt,  she 
beheld  her  husband  interring  the  corpse  of  one  of  those 
unfortunate  minor  playwrights,  whom  he  had  a  morbid 
passion  for   destroying,  after   purloining   the   plots   of 
their  inferior  dramas,  which  his  genius   then   rendered 
immortal,    and    saw    the  full  depth  of   the    abyss   of 
infamy  which  her  marriage  was  expected  to  cover,  and 
understood  that  she  was  expected  to  be  the  cloak  and 
the  accomplice  of  this  villany.     It  was  to  their  lonely 
country  house  in  Warwickshire,  that  the  victims  were 
one   by  one   enticed   by  him,  when  he   returned  there 
from  the  wild  orgies  of  his  tavern  life  in  London ;  and 
there  can   be  no   doubt   that  a   dark  suspicion   of  the 
dreadful    truth    had    flashed   across   the   mind   of  the 
unhappy  Robert  Greene,  when  he  wrote  his  dying  exhor- 
tation to  his  friends,  warning  them  against  the  "painted 
monsters"  of  whom  Shakespeare's  troop  was  composed: 
"  Yes,  trust  them  not;    for   there   is   among   them  an 
upstart  crow,  beautified  with  our  feathers,  that  with  his 
tiger's  heart  wrapped  in  a  player's  hide,"  etc. ;  and 
even  Dr.  Johnson,  though  he  appears  to  have  been  too 
careless   or   too   obtuse   to   penetrate   farther   into  the 


10 


mystery,  admits  that  "  he  fled  to  London  from  the  terror 
of  a  criminal  prosecution." 

The  hasty  marriage  of  a  youth  scarcely  nineteen  with 
a  woman  of  twenty-six  is  thus  explained.  He  required 
an  accomplice,  a  cloak ;  a  gentle,  uncomplaining  wife  to 
dwell  in  retirement  in  the  lonely  country  house  this 
London  roisterer  was  compelled  to  maintain  at  a  distance 
from  the  scene  of  his  dramatic  triumphs. 

We  have  said  that  the  young  wife  now  beheld  the  full 
depths  of  the  infamy  her  marriage  was  to  cover.  It  was 
then  that  he  bade  her  in  his  own  forcible  and  terrible 
words :  — 

"  look  thou  down  into  this  den 
And  see  a  fearful  sight  of  blood  and  death. 

All  on  a  heap  like  to  a  slaughtered  lamb 
In  this  detested,  dark,  blood-drinking  pit. 

this  fell  devouring  receptacle 

As  hateful  as  Cocytus'  misty  mouth. 

Look  for  thy  reward 

Among  the  nettles  at  the  elder-tree  * 

Which  overhangs  the  mouth  of  this  same  pit." 

*  The  reason  of  this  substitution  of  an  elder-tree  for  a  crab- 
tree  in  the  drama  is  obvious.  Even  the  morbid  dwelling  on 
his  two  crimes,  which  impelled  him  continually  to  allude  to  them 
in  his  writing,  could  not  entirely  blind  him,  even  in  his  most 


11 


The  evidences  of  an  agonized  conscience  are  so  thickly 
strewn  throughout  his  works,  that  we  might  almost 
quote  at  random  :  — • 

"I,  as  his  host 

That  should  against  his  murderer  shut  the  door, 
Not  bear  the  knife  myself." 

"  Oh,  my  offence  is  rank,  it  smells  to  Heaven, 
It  hath  the  primal  eldest  curse  upon  it." 

"  Now  doth  he  feel 
His  secret  murders  sticking  on  his  hands." 

"  Better  be  the  dead 
Whom  we,  to  gain  our  peace,  have  sent  to  peace." 

"  And  all  our  yesterdays, 
Have  lighted  fools  to  dusty  death." 

"  What  if  this  cursed  hand 
Were  thicker  than  itself  with  brother's  blood." 

"  Oh,  wretched  state, 
Oh,  bosom  black  as  death,"  etc.,  etc. 

Any  one    who  reads    the    tragedies    of     " Macbeth," 

conscience-stricken  moments,  to  the  danger  of  being  too 
explicit.  At  a  later  period,  when  Mr.  Shakespeare  removed  to 
New  Place,  the  guilty  secret  was  hidden  beneath  a  mulberry- 
tree. 


12 


" Hamlet,"  "Titus  Andronicus,"  etc.,  with  this  story 
in  his  mind,  will  see  that  it  is  true. 

Many  women  would  have  been  utterly  crushed  by 
such  a  disclosure :  some  would  have  fled  from  him 
immediately,  and  exposed  and  denounced  the  crime. 
Mrs.  Shakespeare  did  neither.  She  would  neither  leave 
her  husband  nor  betray  him;  nor  would  she  for  one 
moment  justify  his  sin ;  and  hence  came  thirty -two  years 
of  convulsive  struggle,  in  which  sometimes  for  a  time 
the  good  angel  appeared  to  gain  ground,  and  then  the 
evil  one  returned  with  sevenfold  vehemence. 

His  eldest  daughter,  Susanna,  for  whom  his 
preference  is  so  plainly  shown  in  his  will,  became  the 
partner  of  his  guilt.  Mr.  Shakespeare  argued  his  case 
with  her,  with  his  noble  wife,  and  with  himself,  with 
all  the  sophistries  of  his  powerful  mind  :  — 

"  Do  what  you  will,  to  you  it  doth  belong 
Yourself  to  pardon  of  self-doing  crime." 

"  Tis  better  to  be  vile,  than  vile  esteemed." 
"I will  acquaintance  strangle,  and  look  strange." 

"  No  more  be  grieved  at  that  which  thou  hast  done : 
Koses  have  thorns,  and  silver  fountains  mud ; 
Cloud  and  eclipses  stain  both  moon  and  sun, 
And  loathsome  canker  lives  in  sweetest  bud. 
All  men  make  faults,  and  even  I  in  this, 


13 


Authorizing  thy  trespass  with  compare, 
Myself  corrupting,  salving  thy  amiss, 
Excusing  thy  sins  more  than  thy  sins  are." 

These  devilish  sophistries,  though  unable  to  shake  his 
lofty-minded  wife,  were  ruinous  to  the  unfortunate  child 
of  sin,  born  with  a  curse  upon  her,  over  whose  wayward 
nature  Mrs.  Shakespeare  watched  with  a  mother's 
tenderness ;  though  the  task  was  a  difficult  one,  from 
the  strange,  abnormal  propensity  to  murder  inherited  by 
the  object  of  her  cares.  But  though  he  could  thus  warp 
this  young  soul,  his  divine  wife  followed  him  through  all 
his  sophistical  reasonings  with  a  keener  reason.  She 
besought  and  implored  him  in  the  name  of  his  better 
nature  and  by  all  the  glorious  things  he  was  capable  of 
being  and  doing;  and  she  had  just  power  enough  to 
convulse  and  agonize,  but  not  power  enough  to  subdue. 
These  thirty-two  years,  during  which  Mrs.  Shake- 
speare was  struggling  to  bring  her  husband  back  to  his 
better  self,  were  a  series  of  passionate  convulsions. 
Towards  the  last  she  and  her  husband  saw  less  and  less 
of  each  other,  and  he  came  more  decidely  under  evil 
influences,  and  seemed  to  acquire  a  sort  of  hatred  to 
her. 

"  If  ere  I  loved  her,  all  that  love  is  gone ; 
My  heart  to  her  but  as  in  guest-wise  sojourned." 


14 


He  had  tried  his  strength  with  her  fully;  he  had 
attempted  to  confuse  her  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  and 
bring  her  into  the  ranks  of  those  convenient  women  who 
regard  marriage  as  a  sort  of  friendly  alliance  to  cover 
murder  on  both  sides.  When  her  husband  described  to 
her  the  Continental  cities  where  midnight  assassinations 
were  habitual  things,  and  the  dark  marriage's  in  which 
complaisant  couples  mutually  agreed  to  form  the  cloak 
for  each  other's  murders,  and  gave  her  to  understand 
that  in  this  way  alone  could  she  have  a  peaceful  and 
friendly  life  with  him,  she  simply  said,  "  Master  Shake- 
speare, I  am  too  truly  thy  friend  to  do  this." 

Mr.  Shakespeare's  treatment  of  his  wife  during  the 
sensitive  periods  that  preceded  the  births  of  her  three 
children  was  always  marked  by  paroxysms  of  unmanly 
brutality,  for  which  the  only  possible  charity  on  her 
part  was  the  supposition  of  insanity.  He  himself 
alludes  to  it,  with  his  usual  sophistry,  where  he  speaks 
of  "his  eye  in  a  fine  frenzy  rolling.1''  Howe  sheds  a 
significant  light  on  these  periods,  by  telling  us  that 
about  those  times,  Shakespeare  was  drunk  day  after  day 
with  Ben  Jonson,  Marlowe,  etc. 

A  day  or  two  after  the  birth  of  her  first  child, 
Susannah,  Mr.  Shakespeare  came  suddenly  into  Mrs. 
Shakespeare's  room,  and  told  her  that  her  mother,  good 


15 


Mistress  Hathaway,  was  dead.  A  day  or  two  after  the 
birth  of  the  second  child,  Hamnet,  he  came  with  still 
greater  suddenness  into  her  room,  and  told  her  that  her 
father,  the  venerable  Master  Hathaway,  was  dead ;  and 
a  day  or  two  after  the  birth  of  the  third  child,  Judith, 
he  came  with  greater  suddenness  than  ever  into 
the  chamber,  and  harrowed  her  feelings  by  announcing 
the  death  of  worthy  Master  John  a  Combe. 

Never  has  more  divine  strength  of  love  existed  in  a 
woman.  Her  conduct  in  these  trying  circumstances 
displays  the  breadth  of  Mrs.  Shakespeare's  mind,  and, 
above  all,  her  clear  divining,  moral  discrimination; 
never  mistaking  wrong  for  right  in  the  .slightest  degree  ; 
fully  alive  to  the  criminality  of  Mr.  Shakespeare  and 
his  guilty  daughter's  murderous  proceedings ;  yet  with 
a  mercifulness  that  made  allowance  for  every  weakness 
and  pitied  every  sin.  On  one  occasion,  after  their 
removal  to  New  Place,  she  came  upon  him.  sitting  with 
the  partner  of  his  guilt,  beneath  the  fatal  mulberry-tree. 
She  went  up  to  them,  and  he,  looking  down  upon  the 
grave  among  the  nettles,  with  a  sarcastic  smile,  said: 
"When  will  those  three  down  there  meet  us  again?  " 
She  answered,  "  Not  in  Heaven,  I  fear." 
During  all  this  trial,  strange  to  say,  her  belief  that 
the  good  in  Mr.  Shakespeare  would  finally  conquer, 


16 


remained  unshaken.  She  forgave  him  even  the  cruelty 
with  which  he  strove  to  make  her  ridiculous  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world,  by  his  constant  allusions  to  her  being 
older  than  himself,  and  his  false  and  unmanly  attacks 
upon  her  disposition :  — 

"  Too  old,  by  Heaven !  still  let  the  woman  take 
An  elder  than  herself." 

"Crabbed  age  and  youth  cannot  live  together." 

"  Age,  I  do  abhor  thee ! 
Age,  I  do  defy  thee." 

"  0  spite !  too  old  to  be  engaged  to  young ! " 
"  Curster  than  she  :  why,  'tis  impossible ! " 

"As  old  as  Sibyl,  and  as  curst  and  shrewd 
As  Socrates'  Xantippe,  or  a  worse." 

All  these  and  more  ribald  and  unmanly  insults  and 
obscenity  fell  at  her  pitying  feet  unheeded. 

It  has  been  thought  by  some  friends  who  have  read 
the  proof-sheets  of  the  foregoing  pages,  that  the  author 
should  give  more  specifically  her  authority  for  these 
statements. 

The  great-great-grandmother  of  the  present  writer 
was  one  of  those  pilgrim  mothers,  devoted  companions 


17 


of  certain  less  widely  known  but  surely  not  less 
deserving  pilgrim  fathers,  who  were  despatched  at  the 
expense  of  an  effete  mother  country  to  assist  in 
colonizing  the  British  possessions  of  the  American 
continent.  The  writer's  venerable  ancestor  and 
namesake.  Mistress  H —  B.  Chers'tow,  had  occasion, 
before  quitting  her  native  land,  to  visit  Warwickshire, 
and  the  circumstances  which  led  her  there  at  that  time 
originated  a  friendship  and  correspondence  with  Mistress 
Shakespeare,  which  was  always  regarded  as  one  of  the 
greatest  acquisitions  of  that  visit.  She  there  received 
a  letter  from  Mrs.  Shakespeare,  indicating  that  she 
wished  to  have  some  private,  confidential  communication 
upon  important  subjects,  and  inviting  her  for  that 
purpose  to  spend  a  day  with  her  at  her  country-seat 
near  Stratford. 

Mrs.  H —  B.  Cherstow  went,  and  spent  a  day  with  Mrs. 
Shakespeare  alone,  and  the  object  of  the  invitation  was 
explained  to  her.  Mrs.  Shakespeare  was  in  such  a  state 
of  health  that  her  physician,  worthy  Dr.  Hall  (the 
husband  of  the  abnormal  offspring  c '  born  in  bitterness 
and  nurtured  in  convulsion  " ) ,  had  warned  her  that  she 
had  very  little  time  to  live.  She  was  engaged  in  those 
duties  and  retrospections,  which  every  thoughtful  person 


18 


finds  necessary  when  coming  deliberately  and  with  open 
eyes  to  the  boundaries  of  this  mortal  life. 

At  that  period  some  cheap  performances  of  Mr. 
Shakespeare's  plays  at  the  Globe  Theatre  were  in  con- 
templation, intended  to  bring  his  works  before  the  eyes 
of  the  masses.  Under  these  circumstances,  some  of  Mrs. 
Shakespeare's  friends  had  proposed  the  question  to  her 
whether  she  had  not  a  responsibility  to  society  for  the 
truth;  whether  she  did  right  to  allow  those  dramas  to 
gain  influence  over  the  popular  mind,  by  giving  a  silent 
consent  to  what  she  knew  to  be  utter  falsehoods. 

Mrs.  Shakespeare's  whole  life  had  been  passed  in  the 
most  heroic  self-abnegation  and  self-sacrifice,  and  she 
had  now  to  consider  whether  one  more  act  of  self-denial 
was  not  required  of  her  before  leaving  this  world,  — 
namely,  to  declare  the  absolute  truth,  no  matter  at  what 
expense  to  her  feelings. 

For  this  reason  it  was  her  desire  to  recount  the  whole 
history  to  a  person  wholly  out  of  the  sphere  of 
theatrical  or  local  feelings,  which  might  be  supposed  to 
influence  those  belonging  to  the  county,  or  to  the 
profession  in  life  in  which  the  events  really  happened; 
in  order  that  she  might  be  helped  by  such  a  person's 
views  in  making  up  an  opinion  as  to  her  own  duty. 
The  interview  had  almost  the  solemnity  of  a  death- 


19 


bed  avowal.  Mrs.  Shakespeare  stated  the  facts  which 
have  been  embodied  above,  and  gave  to  the  writer's 
revered  ancestor,  —  the  first  to  bear  the  henceforth 
immortal  name  of  H —  B.  Cherstow, — a  brief  mem- 
orandum of  the  whole,  with  the  dates  affixed. 

The  words  and  actions  of  Mrs.  Shakespeare  during 
the  last  part  of  her  life  seemed  more  like  those  of  a 
blessed  being,  detached  from  earth,  than  those  of  an 
ordinary  mortal.  What  impressed  Mrs.  H —  B.  Cherstow 
more  strongly  than  anything  else  was,  Mrs.  Shake- 
speare's conviction  that  Mr.  Shakespeare  was  now  a 
redeemed  spirit,  and  that  he  looked  back  with  shame 
and  regret  on  the  immense  destruction  of  human  life  of 
which  he  had  been  guilty ;  and  that,  if  he  could  speak 
or  act  in  the  case,  he  would  desire  to  prohibit  the 
representation  of  those  dangerous  dramas,  the  seductive 
poetry  of  which  he  had  made  the -vehicle  of  his  morbid 
love  of  slaughter,  and  unworthy  passion  for  burying  his 
fellow-playwrights  beneath  the  mulberry-tree. 

Mrs.  Shakespeare's  strongly  philosophical  mind  had 
become  satisfied  that  Mr.  Shakespeare  was  one  of  those 
unfortunately  constituted  persons  in  whom  the  balance 
of  nature  is  so  critically  hung  that  it  is  always  in 
danger  of  dipping  towards  insanity,  and  that  in  certain 
periods  of  his  life  he  was  so  far  under  the  influence  of 


20 


mental  disorder  as  not  to  be  fully  responsible  for  his 
actions. 

She  went  over,  with  a  brief  and  clear  analysis,  the 
history  of  his  whole  life  as  she  had  thought  it  out  in  the 
lonely  musings  of  her  widowhood.  She  went  through 
the  mismanagement  of  his  infancy,  —  how  he  was  allowed 
to  mule  and  puke  in  his  nurse's  arms ;  of  his  neglected 
childhood,  whining,  and  creeping  like  snail  unwillingly 
to  school ;  yet  so  precocious  in  deceit,  as  when  there  to 
show  a  shining  morning  face.  She  sketched  boldly  and 
clearly  the  mixture  of  ferocity  and  hypocrisy  character- 
izing the  internal  life  of  the  youth  in  his  father's  slaugh- 
ter-house ,  where,  as  old  Aubrey  tells  us,  "  he  exercised 
his  father's  trade,  and  when  he  killed  a  calf  would  do 
it  in  high  style,  and  make  a  speech."  She  dwelt  on 
the  account  given  by  Davis  of  his  being  "much  given 
to  all  unluckiness  in  stealing  venison  and  rabbits,"  and 
showed  how  habits  which,  with  less  susceptible  fibre  and 
coarser  strength  of  nature,  were  tolerable  for  his 
companions,  were  deadly  to  him;  unhinging  his  nervous 
system,  which  she  considered  might  have  been  still 
further  unhinged,  when  Sir  Lucy,  whose  venison  he 
stole,  "often  had  him  whipped,  and  sometimes  im- 
prisoned," and  she  recalled  to  the  listener's  mind  how 
the  same  chronicler  adds,  "  but  his  revenge  was  great," 


21 


quoting  his  own  terrible  description  of  the  state  of  mind 
to  which  he  had  gradually  been  brought  by  unrestrained 
indulgence  in  every  description  of  criminality  and 
excess : — 

" Lucius.  —  Art  thou  not  sorry  for  these  heinous  deeds?  " 

"  Aaron.  — Ay,  that  I  had  not  done  a  thousand  more, 
Even  now  I  curse  the  day  (and  yet  I  think 
Few  come  within  the  compass  of  my  curse) 
Wherein  I  did  not  some  notorious  ill : 
As  kill  a  man,  or  else  devise  his  death." 

Mrs.  H —  B.  Cherstow  was  so  impressed  and  ex- 
cited by  the  whole  scene  and  the  recital,  that  she 
begged  for  two  or  three  days  to  deliberate,  before  forming 
any  opinion.  She  took  the  memorandum  with  her  to 
London,  and  gave  a  day  or  two  to  the  consideration  of 
the  subject.  She  wrote  to  Mrs.  Shakespeare  that  while 
this  act  of  consideration  for  the  morals  of  the  people  of 
England  did  seem  to  be  called  for,  yet  if  these  dreadful 
disclosures  were  published  during  the  lifetime  of 
Mistress  Susannah  Hall,  her  husband,  or  relations,  some 
steps  might  probably  be  taken  to  vindicate  her 
reputation  and  Mr.  Shakespeare's  memory;  but  that  by 
waiting  until  they  should  all  have  been  called  to  their 
account,  there  would  be  no  possibility  of  refuting  the 
charges  contained  in  the  memorandum,  which  would 


22 


thus  become  a  document  of  considerable  marketable 
value. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  present  writer's  venerable 
ancestor  was  influenced  in  making  these  remarks  by 
that  prudent  forethought  for  the  worldly  advancement 
of  her  family  which  regulated  her  course  through  life, 
and  has  caused  her  memory  to  be  gratefully  revered  by 
whole  generations  of  Cherstows;  she  probably  foresaw 
that,  if  published  at  a  fitting  moment,  these  dreadful 
disclosures  might  be  made  instrumental,  under  Provi- 
dence, in  providing  meat  for  those  infant  blossoms  of  the 
Cherstow  family  she  was  about  to  conduct  to  America. 

After  the  death  of  the  first  H —  B.  Cherstow,  her 
descendants  sought  eagerly  among  her  papers  for  the 
important  memorandum  in  question;  but  failed  to 
discover  it,  and,  indeed,  it  had  long  been  supposed  to  be 
irrevocably  lost  or  destroyed,  when  the  providential  fall 
(through  dry  rot)  of  the  house  inhabited  by  the  first 
generation  of  Cherstows  brought  the  missing  document 
to  light,  when  it  was  at  once  appropriated  by  the 
present  writer,  as  an  invaluable  means  of  doing  justice 
to  the  memory  of  one  whom  she  considers  the  most; 
remarkable  woman  the  sixteenth  century  has  produced. 
No  such  memoir  has  appeared  on  the  part  of  her 
friends,  and  Mr.  Shakespeare's  editors  have  the  ear  of 


23 


the  public ;  sowing  far  and  wide  those  poisonous 
effusions  of  his  genius,  which  are  eagerly  gathered  up 
and  read  by  an  undiscriminating  community. 

However,  Anne  Hathaway  Shakespeare  has  an 
American  name,  and  an  American  existence,  and 
reverence  for  pure  womanhood  is,  we  think,  proved,  by 
these  pages,  to  be  an  American  characteristic ;  and,  what 
is  even  more  to  the  point,  there  can  be  little  doubt  of 
the  profit  likely  to  accrue  to  one  specimen  of  pure 
American  womanhood  through  their  publication  by,  it 
is  hoped,  a  not  unworthy  descendant  of  the  original 
H—  B.  Cherstow. 


2sl6)476 


Manufactured  by 

GAYLORD  BROS.  Inc. 

Syracuse,  N.  Y. 

Stockton,  Calif. 


M532707 


